Ethereum Projects for Beginners: Build blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, and DApps

Gnosis is market-driven forecasting technology. It is based on proven scientific research. It has its own platform known as the Gnosis platform and you can build your own platform on top of it. It basically makes trading predictions. And correct predictions are given the tokens that were at stake for incorrect predictions. Visit https://gnosis.pm/ to access Gnosis.

The way it works is that you trade predictions or you bet on predictions. The following is the front page of Gnosis:

Gnosis front page

In the preceding screenshot, do note the question that is being asked on their home page. Will Dubai's world record for the largest New Year's Eve fireworks display get broken? You can vote yes or no, and by voting, your tokens are at stake, and an Oracle is then going to tell you whether the event happened or not. The blockchain will then check on that Oracle. Oracles are nothing but smart contracts that interact with the outside elements. They can store and retrieve data—this is just what an Ethereum transaction needs to make decisions. An Oracle is a trusted source, and after checking with this trusted source, you can determine in a blockchain whether the event really did happen or not, and you can be absolutely certain about it.

The following diagram explains exactly how this happens:

The Gnosis platform layers

FirstBlood is comparable to Gnosis; it is for e-sports. In cases where you are a gamer, you can sign up for a match using tokens. You can put tokens at stake to win tokens, you can put yourself in a queue in a pool of other teams or people, and you can play against them. You can even participate in tournaments. The winner of the game gets the tokens. Oracle is used to decide the outcome of a match. Visit http://firstblood.io to access FirstBlood.

This is a peer-to-peer insurance company, meaning there are no more middlemen. Currently, they are working on unemployment insurance, wherein you get paid to be unemployed! You just have to show people that you are actively looking for a job. The way they verify this is by using an Oracle similar to Gnosis and FirstBlood, but they use it to check LinkedIn and to verify that you have been applying to jobs.

This is basically a decentralized music store for artists! We all know iTunes, Spotify, and so on. These are companies that are sitting in the middle of artists and their fans, but fans can't know right away how much money artists actually make from each sale. Ujo Music takes care of this by decentralizing the music store. There are no more middlemen, which means that they are a bridge between artists and fan. This certainly means it ensures more power and money for the artists. There are no worries about licensing and it delivers music services only to verified identities. To access Ujo Music, visit https://ujomusic.com/.

The way it works work is described in the screenshot; they have multiple layers and they have their licensing and payments on Ethereum. They have a persistent identity on uPort which is also built on Ethereum:

Ujo Music 

The files themselves are stored in decentralized file storage, InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), and the metadata uses constellate which is also built on Ethereum.

The next project is one of my favorites.

It is a decentralized supercomputer! It does off-chain calculations. Off-chain calculations are calculations that do not happen on the blockchain; calculations are done outside of the blockchain. Then on the on-chain, it will verify these calculations. This means you can rent out your spare computing power or you can hire extra computing power if you need it. You can do this for 3D rendering, computational chemistry, AI machine learning—anything you like. To visit Golem, go to https://golem.network/.

In the following screenshot, you can see the Golem GUI. On the left, you can see a basic wallet; you can also see how much CPU, RAM, and disk space are being used. To the right, you can see a little proof of concept of three tasks being put out there, it's three Blender tasks, in this case, 3D rendering tasks:

Golem GUI

Bitcoin was the first blockchain, but Bitcoin was only meant for payments. People started discovering that Bitcoin could be used for other scenarios; we call this Colored Coins. Bitcoin had a surprisingly open design and one guy, Vitalik Buterin, decided to start developing Ethereum on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. But, due to limitations in Bitcoin, Ethereum now has its own blockchain.

The following table shows the differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum:

Bitcoin and Ethereum are both blockchains. They both rely heavily on private/public-key cryptography, and even though Bitcoin is primarily a form of payment, both can be used to transfer value, although, with the Ethereum blockchain, value will be processed with logic. Both are completely immutable.

The following are the things to remember for blockchains:

The following are some of the benefits of blockchain:

The following are some difficulties one can face while using blockchains:

The following are the things we will need for setting up the workflow:

Follow these steps to set up the workflow:

Getting the NPM

MetaMask Main Network

Command to install Ethereum blockchain simulator

Installing Ethereum Simulator

Once that is done, it will tell you that it has succeeded; quit this for now because I have already reinstalled this. You can go ahead and verify it by typing ganache-cli into your Command Prompt and verifying that it runs. The following will be the output you will get if you have installed the simulator correctly:

Ethereum Simulator

Command for installing Truffle

Truffle